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Revising an English Paper

Today I have an English paper due for my Rhetoric class, and I have it written (all but a conclusion) and I'm hoping that some one could read it and give me some ideas on whether it flows or if it comes across too blocky or too broken? Mainly I'm hoping that it reads well and makes sense. And, well, if you come across some glaring mistakes (Spelling or grammar) you could point those out, too.

Quote:

The Unjustness of the Atomic Bomb

At 8:15 on August 6, 1945 the United States military dropped Little Boy, an atomic bomb containing the equivalent of 13 kilotons of TNT, on Hiroshima Japan with the official purpose of ending the war with Japan. Though the rightness of using the atomic bomb on Japan has been hotly debated for 60 years, there are no strong defendable reasons for the attack to qualify as just under the Just War theory; the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima during World War II violated both the noncombatant immunity and proportionality clauses of the Just War philosophy.

For an attacking nation to be considered moral, they must follow the ideas of noncombatant immunity, the philosophy that military personnel must not directly attack civilians and must also minimize and avoid harm to non-combatants. It must also not use more force than necessary to attain a military objective; in essence the military must “avoid disproportionate collateral damage to civilian life and property” (Just War 81).

The direct attack of a Japanese city using the atomic bomb during World War II defied the noncombatant immunity tenet of the Just War philosophy. When a nation attacks another nation it must do whatever possible to avoid harming the enemy civilians; unfortunately using the atomic bomb on a city teeming with non-combatant men, women, and children does quite the opposite. As President Truman stated to the world in 1945 soon after the attack, the bomb was used to attack the city of “____________” in order to “[destroy] its usefulness to the enemy” (Truman). This statement is important for two reasons, the first of which was that Truman and the military had no specific target with the most military advantage in bombing, thus the speech was left blank to be filled in once Washington found out which city was chosen for the drop, and it is also important because it clearly states the government’s intent to attack a rival nation’s cities as opposed to bombing military bases, air craft carriers, etc. The undertones of this conveys the military’s objective of causing the most damage to the Japanese infrastructure without paying attention to the collateral damage done to the entirety of the city it bombs nor to the civilians who populate it. Also, the simple fact that the dropping of the atomic bomb resulted in a death toll of “122,338 of approximately 254,000 residents” in Hiroshima displays certainty that the US government did not actively attempt to avoid harm to the city’s noncombatant civilians (Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Killing half of a city’s population can hardly be considered avoiding harm to the area’s non-combatant civilians, and in fact expresses quite the opposite; the civilians and city were targeted specifically as opposed to the military bases in the area. Finally, in Hiroshima approximately 80-90% of the city’s medical care workers were killed by the blast; the destruction of Hiroshima’s medical facilities crippled the city’s ability to provide health care to the civilians targeted by the atomic bomb. Though the Geneva Convention had yet to be convened at the time of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the idea that “…medical units must be protected…by all sides in a conflict” can be applied retroactively to the Just War theory; as international law now prohibits targeting medical personnel, it is a valid conclusion to include medical personnel into the category of noncombatants and civilians (Geneva Convention I art. 19). If this statement regarding medical personnel is accepted as fact it further proves the inability of the Hiroshima attack to be considered just under the Just War theory.

Additionally, for a war to be just, the damage must be proportional to the goals, and the military must use no more force than necessary to achieve its goals; in this case the goal was to end the war against Japan as quickly as possible. Naturally many authors have defended the use of the atomic bomb as a means to end the war as it avoided invading the Japanese homeland, sparing an expected 1.5 million American and British casualties, a far larger number than the 150,000 Japanese casualties sustained by the use of the atomic bomb. Obviously given the choice between over a million soldiers against 150,000 Japanese civilians, the answer is a fairly simple utilitarian choice, but in this case the options of using the atomic bomb and invading the Japanese islands weren’t the only alternatives. First of all, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that “prior to December 31 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped…” (Barret 1 par 2). This simply proves that at the time of the attack experts circulated intelligence stating that there wasn’t a real need to invade Japan, much less drop the atomic bomb on them, on account of Japan’s eminent and expected surrender before the end of 1945. Additionally, the war against Japan could have ended at any time between the Potsdam Conference and August 12, the final surrender date. The Emperor of Japan had begun “to negotiate for peace as early as February 1945, and [he] had presented various proposals immediately before the Potsdam conference in July 1945;” in each of these proposals the Japanese government included a request for the Emperor’s immunity (Lackey 40). During the Potsdam Conference Truman demanded “unconditional surrender” from the Japanese Emperor, though part of the eventual surrender of the Japanese to the Allies included immunity to the Japanese Emperor (Lackey 40). Had the American government provided immunity to the Emperor in July of that year, the need to drop the bomb on the Japanese to end the war would have been averted entirely. Due to the options between destroying the city of Hiroshima and accepting a conditional surrender from Japan, which the Japanese eventually obtained, the collateral damage caused by the atomic bomb was not proportional to the objective of forcing the Japanese to surrender.

I see that you are using some quotes, but not where (and more importantly, how) I want them.

Ensure that you are using the proper citation protocol (for example, the APA) as dictated by your professor.

Please cite the JUST WAR thoery that your argument surrounds. If you don't, then your JW theory may differ from mine, and the argument becomes moot.

Essay like this, you should have about a dozen more citations. Am I going overboard here because I have suffered the wrath of graduate school? Possibly.

Finally, you take the stance that Japan would have surrendered anyway, making the atomic bomb the worst possible action. Please dig into the rationale behind that theory, and quote some juicy propositions. Why did someone say that Japan was going to surrender? What do the author's critics say?

Basically a good paper, depending on the year you are in and the original assignment question. Please explain the Just War theory, tell me when it was devised, who devised it, what weight it had in the context of WWII, et cetera.

For an excellent ending/conclusion, tell us what you would have done to keep the Just War thoery in place and still fulfill the mission: Get Japan to surrender. Cite the sources (I guarantee you that you will not be the first one to think of that way to write history. If you are, you have a Phd thesis waiting for you.)

Were medical facilities intentionally targetted in Hiroshima/Nagasaki? If they were, cite the source that says that. If they were collateral damage(cite that source), explain that the "Collateral Damage" from nuclear munitions has severe consequences, and then talk about the percentage of medical personnel killed.

Quote:

Basically a good paper, depending on the year you are in and the original assignment question. Please explain the Just War theory, tell me when it was devised, who devised it, what weight it had in the context of WWII, et cetera.

Exactly what I was thinking...

As someone who's not in the class and doesn't know the backhistory, I think too much knowledge is being assumed on the part of the reader.. Don't dumb it down, but don't assume that the reader knows what you are trying to refute or defend, they could have a different idea of what Just War theory is...

If it's a rhetoric class, you want to be setting your quotes according to MLA guidelines, unless your professor has specified a preference for the APA. Remember, any quote longer than 3 lines gets off-set.

Here is my favorite website for MLA style: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handou...rch/r_mla.html

You definitely need to break up your paragraphs. Just looking at them scares me away. I also noticed some issues with punctuation--forgotten commas, an oddly placed semi-colon...go back over it and look thoroughly to see what you might have missed.

As a side note, Ben: for a 400-level paper, he should be consulting between 5-10 sources, with a preference towards print. More sources never hurts though ;)

Ah, sorry about that - The English class I'm taking is based around writing about the Just War theory, so my target audience (i.e. classmates and teacher) have a good understanding of what the Just War theory is. Essentially the Just war theory is a philosophy that gives moral standards to the decision to wage war, and the ways in which a war must be waged in order to be Just.

While I may not be able to convince you on whether it's actually Just or Unjust, I'm mainly looking for thoughts on writing style, where sentences could be changed up, confusing sentences, etc.

Since this is just an English class and not necessarily a history class I can fudge my paper a little bit to prove a point.

Yes, but which just war theory? There are several available.

Quote:

Originally Posted by onesnowyowl

I can't find the punctuation errors unfortunately. In my head it all seems to work out, but hopefully they're not too noticable.

This paper is for English 105, not a higher level class. It's simply a 3-5 page paper trying to prove or disprove a point.

For this paper, I don't really need criticism on whether it's proven it's point as to what the Just War theory is (though I explain what I'm citing in the second paragraph)-

"For an attacking nation to be considered moral, they must follow the ideas of noncombatant immunity, the philosophy that military personnel must not directly attack civilians and must also minimize and avoid harm to non-combatants. It must also not use more force than necessary to attain a military objective; in essence the military must “avoid disproportionate collateral damage to civilian life and property” (U.S. Bishops 81). "

Anyway - I've fixed the MLA errors, and I'm glad you commented on that or I would have forgotten to do that.